Communications switch and router systems need to provide a low failure rate for communication routing and transmission. Many systems use an architecture which provides redundant communication capabilities to switch away from failures when they occur. A common reliability measure is whether or not the system provides six 9's reliability, i.e. is available 99.9999% of a given time period. This requires rapid fault detection and correction.
Prior art systems provide redundancy for a primary source element in a communication switch. A validation module assesses the health of the primary source. When the validation module determines that the health of the primary source has deteriorated below a defined threshold, a switch is made to make the redundant source the primary source.
However prior art systems do not consider a scenario where the redundant source has a relative health worse than the primary source. In that scenario, if a switch is made, the new primary source provides worse service than the original primary source. Switching to a redundant source in this case may result in unavailability of the communications device, adversely affecting its reliability percentage.
There is a need for a system and method providing switching redundancy that improves upon the prior art systems.